Palin should not be dismissed so readily
After about two hours of discussion, one of the four Queen's University students I had brought along with me to Montreal to meet Brian Mulroney asked Canada's former prime minister about the American election then raging.
It was October of 2008 and the student, a Barack Obama fan like most Canadians, made a dismissive comment to Mulroney, well-known as the Canadian prime minister who knew and still knows our neighbors best, about then Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin of Alaska.
The student continued.
"She's tough to take seriously, isn't she Mr. Mulroney?"
Mulroney looked directly at his young visitor from Kingston before replying.
"I don't know Governor Palin," he said, "but I will tell you this. While it does look like Obama will win in a few weeks time, I'd hardly dismiss Palin if I were you. If there has been one winner for the Republicans this year it has been her. I expect she'll be playing a major role in her party for some time to come."
This exchange was on my mind the other day as I walked into a bookstore and bought Palin's new memoir, "Going Rogue."
If truth be known, I've been a secret fan of Palin ever since the last American presidential campaign. While I share few of her beliefs, particularly about social matters, her meteoric rise has been fascinating to watch. She's touched about every third rail in American politics and one has to least admire the former Alaska governor's courage for doing so.
And this fall, as the pundits and professors arrogantly dismissed her again, countless Americans have been lining up to hear her message as she's embarked upon a book tour to places in Middle America the elites in New York City couldn't even spell. With the realities of office now wilting Obama's bloom, she's been given a second look by many millions of the so-called ordinary folks who live south of us.
Republicans, who have now lost the White House and the Congress, sure don't appear to have any other stars on the horizon. Like the chattering classes up here, they have been so busy dismissing Palin that she has snuck her success right by them.
As the old Canadian conservative John Diefenbaker used to say when under attack by the Canadian versions of the U.S. sophisticates now dining out on Palin, "Everybody is against me - except the people." In the run-up to the 1957 election that saw Diefenbaker and his party end 22 years of Liberal Party rule in Canada, a junior cabinet minister in the about-to-be-defeated Liberal government told a journalist that he was glad that the Canadian election had yet not been held that year. Had that happened, he intoned at a cocktail party in our capital, democracy would not have been served as his Liberals would have won every seat in our Parliament!
Diefenbaker, who wasn't much for cocktail parties, faculty clubs or the fine-dining set anyway, did indeed win the election the Liberal had not been worried about and went on to rule Canada for almost six years as prime minister.
There are countless other examples on both sides of the border. Some will remember the days when a conservative golf pro from North Bay, Ontario, named Mike Harris was easily dismissed at society gatherings in Toronto or Kingston. Two majorities as Ontario's premier and a provincial revolution in the way Ontarians were governed later - still largely not undone despite the rhetoric - he's had the last laugh.
In Canadian federal politics, another populist, Jean Chretien, was often dismissed - even by those in his own party - by the journalists and professors who thought he too was somehow not fit, not sophisticated enough, to lead. This didn't stop him, however, from winning majority governments three times in a row.
Gerald Ford, yet another thought not smart enough to rule, restored honor to his nation's presidency when Americans needed it most. After him came Jimmy Carter, and after all, how could a peanut farmer from a backwater like Plains really become president (or win the Nobel Peace Prize)?
Ronald Reagan? I remember well our high-school teachers in the early 1980s telling us what a "blip" he was and how "sanity" would soon be restored to American politics.
One does not have to agree with or even like Sarah Palin, or anything she stands for, to realize she's a force worth understanding and respect. With a simple blog entry about "death panels" last year, she set back the Harvard-educated president's health reforms for weeks. The White House crew were so busy laughing at her they ceded crucial time in that debate to the former of mayor of Wasilla, a graduate of the University of Idaho who had never strolled through Harvard Yard.
Sarah Palin might not become her party's nominee next time out but she'll at least play a major role in deciding who is.
Dismissing Palin is far too easy.
Her opponents do so at their peril.
Arthur Milnes, who served as research assistant to former prime minister Brian Mulroney on the latter's 2007 best-selling Memoirs, is a Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University.
